Like most character design decisions in anime, colors are often chosen to reflect personalities more than to be realistic depictions. Although dark skin is not a particularly alien choice, it's more often used to reflect a bouncy, energetic, fiery personality than actual nationality. This probably has roots back to the ideal of Japanese beauty including pale skin, as opposed to the chain of association with tanned people being outdoorsy, and thus lively and adventurous. Add in Western associations with red hair, and you get a boisterous adventure-seeker. Bonus points if they have gold eyes.

Naturally, this includes Hard Drinking Party Girls and Tricksters of both genders. The most common combination with this skin tone is a vibrant and noticeable light color. Red is very popular, associated with all sorts of playful Japanese spirits as well as the kabuki wig, so it's also a common (and deliberately unusual looking) palette choice for demons and Cat Girls. Red's a popular hair color for other reasons as well, of course.

This trope can be Truth in Television in some Asian countries, like Pakistan, where dying hair red with henna dye is common (natural redheads in Pakistan - and there are many - usually have light skin). Dark skin with natural red hair is common in Oceania, especially Vanuatu. In Japan, teenagers will sometimes dye their hair red after bleaching it. This therefore applies to the more tanned characters.

Daisuke/Davis Motomiya from Digimon Adventure 02 unlike his sister and mother so he might have a tan. Must be all the soccer training.

Tanya from Battle Athletes gets the dark skin and straight red hair treatment. Despite the Olympic-like premise of the series explicitly telling us she's supposed to be African, she actually comes off more as◊ a quasi-Cat Girl.

Ed from Cowboy Bebop, whose behavior is all over the map. She could be of Turkish descent, as her father's name translates into Turkish, and her real first name is French (no doubt a tradition started at the Napoleonic Wars, which involved the Ottomans).

Resident martial-artist and Gentle Giant Kanna Kirishima of Sakura Taisen. She hails from Okinawa and, in later games and series, loses some of her darker complexion and bright red hair.

Winia Chester from Scrapped Princess is a more subdued version of this, though she perks up quite a bit around Pacifica.

The princesses Tatra and Tarta in Magic Knight Rayearth. They're both from the foreign country Chizeta. So is the first-series antagonist Caldina, who has dark skin and pink hair and uses trickery and illusion to fight.

Naruki Gelni from Chrome Shelled Regios. She's usually fun-loving and friendly, though she takes her job very seriously.

Yoko Nakajima from The Twelve Kingdoms upon returning to the Twelve Kingdoms from Japan. In her case, she is a "taika", a person from the Twelve Kingdoms world who got carried away to Japan, and thus a shell was covering her to make sure she resembled her "parents". To be fair, the novels specifically mention that she starts out much paler, but after roughing it for several months without shelter, her skin's gotten a very dark tan. The same transformation also gives her green eyes.

Akane Karasuma, aka Sailor Lead Crow, 5th season villain/Quirky Mini Boss Squad member from Sailor Moon. As she's an Alien, it's impossible to tell if this combo is the norm for her people. In the manga the only other people from her world are Phobos and Deimos, who aren't this.

Also the Passionate Sports Girl Elza Gray, a one-episode character from the Sailor Moon anime. She was an old rival and friend of Haruka's and introduced her and Michiru to each other.

Jeannie from Rune Soldier Louie, though she's actually The Stoic. She is, however, a very physical warrior type, so she's not too far off.

Exedore/Exsedol's original design from Macross/Robotech had the colors, but his personality is the opposite of the usual type, being The Spock instead.

Sousou (Caocao) from Ikki Tousen, though his personality is quite darker and more conflicted than the standard. Besides, he starts as a brunet and is only shown with red hair in the second season (Dragon Destiny). In Great Guardians, also, when Saji Genpou (Zuo Ci) drops his Saji facade and retakes his true identity of Ouin Shishi (Wang Yun), his blond hair turns into a blazing red.

Karui was shown to have red hair in a color page of the manga and, later on, in the anime.

When using her Curse Seal, Tayuya also became this. With horns and black sclera.

Kougaiji from Saiyuki is a noble bad guy and seems to deliberately be in color contrast to his Evil Empress stepmother, Gyokomen Koshu (who is pale skinned with green hair). Possibly to emphasize that their personalities are complete opposites - Kougaiji is devoted to his nakama, while Koshu is prone to killing her followers on a whim. Rather than having a fiery personality, he's matched to the element and uses mostly fire attacks.

Gojyo could also be considered an example, since he's rather tan compared to the others. Also has bright red hair.

One of the female pirates in Van Dread: the Second Stage has red hair and tanned skin. It's implied that she's a high-ranking officer and didn't come along on the Nirvana because she and her crew had business on Majer. She shows up just in time to spring the crew from jail. I believe her name was "Vera" or something like that.

Rurouni Kenshin is an interesting case. In the TV series Kenshin is not shown with particularly dark skin, but his hair is explicitly red. People actually say that his hair is red, instead of it just being a visual design element. In the OVA series, he's closer to a Dark-Skinned Redhead in a way that's fairly accurate for a Japanese person. (Dark red hair is very rare but does occur among native Japanese.)

Raphael from Tenshi Ni Narumon has red hair and a fairly dark skin (especially when contrasted with Mikael's) and a matching bouncy and energetic personality, although he's not really hotblooded. In fact, he is pretty mellow, maybe because he wasn't doing much in the series, besides playing guitar and molesting Mikael.

Kyou Sohma in the anime version of Fruits Basket, though the dark-skinned part is pretty much just in comparison to the other characters. It's presumably due to the amount of time he spends outside, and his hair color is a result of the curse.

Ember from ElfQuest. Dark skin and auburn hair is seen in quite a few elves of the Sun Folk, including Leetah (Ember's mother), Shenshen, their mother Toorah, and Behtia. This does not seem to be connected to characterisation, though.

"F***ing" Oyuki-chan from Empowered has light brown skin and red-orange, despite being one of the few Asian characters. She's tomboyish and free-spirited, but being raised in a ninja clan since early childhood has made her highly disciplined with a strict code of honor. She's foul-mouthed and socially-inappropriate to the point of creepiness.

Brier Iron-thorn in P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath is an example in Western fantasy fiction. A big, strong warrior woman raised among soldiers in the sun-drenched south, she's permanently tanned dark from those long years in the sunlight and her hair is a "sullen red", an indicator of the passions and hatreds and intensity of her innermost nature, under the stern exterior.

Ce'Nedra from Literature/The Belgariad is a dryad, and so has red hair and olive skin.

In Codex Alera: Cursor's Fury, Invidia Aquitaine disguises herself as a slave with deep, red-brown skin, and coppery hair. It's justified, though, since this is a world where anyone with sufficient talent at watercrafting (magic using elemental spirits present in water) can change their appearance. And, well, the slave she was supposed to be wasn't exactly the kind you used for sweeping stables...

Quite a few of the mortok tribe in Phenomena has red hair according to Jolsah'sspin-off series. Jolsah himself has purple with red stripes, and his great-great-grandfather had a dark purple.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Ghiscari of Slaver's Bay have a dark complexion, but many have a mixture of black and red hair, like a tortoise shell cat.

Vincent Katherinessen from Elizabeth Bear's novel Carnival.

Josepha Walsh from the Venus Prime series has dark skin and red hair, the result of her mixed heritage.

Live Action TV

Teyla from Stargate Atlantis is dark-skinned with auburn hair to portray her alienness.

Newspaper Comics

Although most screen adaptations have portrayed her as more fair-skinned, the original Newspaper Comics version of Princess Aura from Flash Gordon was one of these. Of course, most Mongonians were portrayed as slightly dark-skinned, so it would have been odd if she had had a light complexion.

Tabletop Games

Given how certain parts of the setting of Exalted operate, it's not uncommon to find these types in the South. Dark-skinned types with hair colors that range from mahogany to copper to straight-up fire engine red aren't uncommon sights in cities like Chiaroscuro or Gem.

Reid Hershel of Tales of Eternia is a Dark Skinned Redhead of the tanned variety, with his skin colour reflecting his athletic, outdoorsy disposition; his skin tone may also be a deliberate attempt to visually set him apart from other Inferians, of whom one of the distinguishing traits is pale skin.

Akuma (aka Gouki) of the Street Fighter series is a bloodthirsty martial artist with dark skin and wild red hair. His "Shin Akuma" form in Capcom vs. SNK takes it even further, with dark red skin and pure white hair.

Crimson Viper, from Street Fighter IV, is darker-skinned than the other girls in the game, but not to the same degree as Akuma.

Although there are many people that dye their hair red in Drowtales (mostly the Vloz'ress), Nel'ralka & Genaninote both Sarghress) both seem to be natural redheads, there's another unnamed Sarghress in chapter 30note page 29, to name but a few.

Survival of the Fittest: Evolution gives us Holly Chapman, who fits. The tan part, according to her profile, is from living in the desert for most of her life, while the red hair comes from a habit of dying it and it just so happened that she was abducted while it was red.

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